Writing advice for AI governance researchers

Here's some advice I often find myself giving people about writing, especially relevant for AI governance research. 

Write to inform decisions

• Back-chain from decisions. Make sure you have concrete high-stakes decisions in mind that you’re trying to have your research and writing inform. Imagine yourself in the shoes of someone making that decision. What would you want to know? What would you be confused about? 
• Remind yourself of why you’re writing. Keep coming back to two questions: what decision am I trying to inform, and who am I writing for? Write down answers to these at the top of the document you're working on. 
• Keep high standards. The AI governance field is small. There's a huge number of questions. It's surprisingly achievable to actually write the best thing on many topics. Set that as your goal. If you write something on a question, you might have written one of ~3 thorough treatments on the topic. It’s worth making sure you get it right: people might take it seriously!
  
  

Get it down

• Find ways to get started. The hardest part of writing is often getting into flow. Experiment with different methods: talking to people or chatbots, writing a strawman, generating a first pass with AI, talking out loud, writing first thing in the morning, reading something on the topic you disagree with. Different things work for different people – and for different moods.
• Separate the builder and critic. It's hard to get writing done if you're constantly asking yourself whether a sentence is quite right. If you’re constantly critiquing your writing. One thing I've found helpful is trying to separate my "builder" and my "critic". Give yourself the space to just get your thoughts down on the page. Edit later.
• Just answer the question. Try to answer the key question of a research project earlier than you'd like to. By doing that, you'll get a sense of where you've got gaps. It also lets you get feedback earlier. For example, try to condense your writing into key 5-10 points every ~40 hours of work. 
• Talk about your research. Writing is synthesis. Talking forces you to synthesise – and can give you new perspectives, or gets you unstuck. 
• Zoom in and out. The reason it's hard to write a particular section or sentence is often that you need to change something at a higher level of abstraction. Maybe the flow of the whole piece is off, or you're trying to argue for the wrong thing. Sometimes it's the other way around: you don't know what structure the whole piece should have, but you know some specific things you want to say. If so, start there.
  
  

Make it good

• Avoid satisficing. Your writing should be: clear, concise, skimmable, insightful. Doing all of these at once is hard, but it’s often worth the effort. It's often worth putting far more effort into improving a piece than feels necessary. 
• Iterate. Most people need many passes at a piece of writing to make it good. Expect to need multiple intense drafting rounds. 
• All words should do work. Ask yourself what work some piece of text (section, paragraph, sentence, clause, word) or a concept is doing. If it's not doing anything, remove it.
• Summary first. Don't lay out a long argument and only summarise at the end. Summarise your key claim(s) three times before laying them out in full: in the title, in the abstract, and in the executive summary or introduction. 
• Reduce abstraction and hedging. We're often very concerned about making sure what we write is true. One way to make sure what you say is true is to be abstract and vague. But that often just reduces the information you communicate. Try being more concrete and specific instead. 
• Use concrete words and short sentences. Avoid using long words, lots of adjectives, or abstract nouns. Make sure readers don’t lose themselves in your sentences. 
• Show, don't tell. When writing a summary or introduction, make the key claims, along with the supporting evidence; don’t just say what you’re gonna say. 
• Clarity is a huge part of the job. There are lots of important ideas in this field waiting for someone to write them up clearly. Clarity helps your thinking, and it's the best way to help your ideas spread.
• Proportional effort. Your effort-per-word should be roughly proportional to how likely readers are to engage with it. Your title, abstract, figures (including figure descriptions!), and intro/executive summary are almost always what people will engage with the most. 
• Listen to your gut. When I'm editing, I often get this feeling of "ugh, this isn't quite right." Listen to that voice. That feeling is usually right, even if you can't yet articulate what's wrong.
• Make it skimmable. Add bolded text and headers to help people parse things quickly. Have your headers give the key points. Use topic sentences. 
  
  

Respond to feedback

• Internalise, don't just address. When responding to comments, Internalise what the comment has to say and address it only insofar as doing so will improve your piece. By falling into the mode of simply "dealing with" the comment – without thinking about how your edit affects the piece as a whole – you’ll often end up with a Frankenstein piece.
• If they misread it, that's on you. If someone misreads something, it was probably for a reason. Treat it as a signal that your writing is unclear – even if you think they "should" have understood.
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Hone the craft

• Just write. The best way to learn to do a thing is often to just do the thing. So keep writing. But write intentionally: get feedback from others, and reflect on what's working.
• Read good writing. Find writing you think is good and engage with it. Get a sense of why it's good. Immerse yourself in it. 
• Read about good writing. There are some good books about writing. People often recommend: Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace and The Sense of Style.